Randy Phillips: Tiger Woods should get back to natural swing

MONTREAL - Like him or not, everybody has an opinion about Tiger Woods.

The spotlight is now back on his golf game and whether he will regain the form with which he once dominated the sport. Those who like Woods would like to see him realize his goal of beating Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major championships. Those who don’t like Woods hope he continues to fall on his face while throwing toddler-like tantrums when things don’t go his way.

Wood’s revamped golf swing will play a major role in how things work out. And Butch Harmon, who coached Woods from 1993 to 2004, might have hit the nail on the head concerning the problem with the former No. 1 ranked player in the world and winner of 14 majors.

“If he ever asked me what I thought he needed to do, I’d tell him, ‘Look, go on the practice tee without anybody – without me, without Sean (Foley, his current coach), without (Hank) Haney (his former coach), without a camera, and start hitting golf shots,” Harmon told the Wall Street Journal last week. “Hit some high draws, some low draws, high fades, low fades, move the ball up and down, move it around.

“Don’t worry about how you do it and go back to feeling it again,” Harmon added. “Quit playing ‘golf swing’ and just hit shots. Just say to himself, ‘I’m gonna hit a low fade and I don’t need anybody to tell me how to do it. I’m just gonna feel it.’”

Harmon suggested Woods has become robotic, and he noticed it at the Masters, where Woods was playing “the golf swing and not golf.”

“In my opinion, he’s very robotic,” Harmon said. “And you could see that at Augusta with all his practice swings and the double-cross shots when he’s trying to fade it and he hooks it.

“I think everyone thought because he won at Bay Hill (the Arnold Palmer Invitational on March 25) that he was back. Well, he didn’t hit it great at Bay Hill, he hit it OK. And Bay Hill’s not a major.”

In essence, Harmon would tell Woods to go back to doing what he did for so many years and for so many victories – swing naturally.

Anyone who plays golf knows it’s a never-ending search for perfection, regardless of your ability. It’s the nature of the beast. And as someone who loves the game and plays it – albeit not nearly at a level to brag about – I’m aware of the tendency to continually seek improvement, thinking this and doing that. And if it doesn’t work, well, maybe if you think that and do this ...

It’s paralysis by analysis, and even to a layperson it’s apparent it now has a vice-grip hold on Woods.

Woods knows the game’s history and is aware that of all the great players over the years only Ben Hogan and Canadian Moe Norman truly owned their golf swings. Woods seeks to be the same, but he should also be aware countless others have tried before him without success. In the process, they spiralled down.

Australian Ian Baker-Finch comes to mind. He’s nowhere near Woods’s stature, but he won 16 international titles, including the 1991 British Open at Royal Birkdale. After that – in his mid-30s and considered to be in his prime – he felt the need to make changes. He eventually lost confidence in his abilities and couldn’t even face being in front of the gallery. He was never the same again.

Baker-Finch’s undoing came in the first round of the 1997 British Open at Royal Troon, when he couldn’t hit anything and shot 92, the worst score by a former champion in the modern era. He promptly withdrew from the championship and retired.

He would return briefly to the PGA Tour to play the 2001 MasterCard Colonial, missing the cut. He officially ended his career after the 2009 Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial, leaving behind an unmatched record of futility, missing 34 consecutive cuts over a 15-year span.

Baker-Finch was found in the fetal position on the floor of the locker room after his collapse at the 1997 Open. He reportedly went through more than 30 coaches, psychologists, hypnotists, nutritionists, gurus, swing doctors and spiritualists to try to regain his form. Nothing worked for him.

Now, nothing appears to be working for Woods.

So why not heed the advice of someone who helped get him to where he was in the first place?

He said it: “Golf is great because you are always in beautiful places when you are playing. Most important is you can spend three, four, 4½ hours with good company, with friends, with family. Spending time with friends, family, that’s great. That makes the round good. The risk for injury, as you know, is very small.”

– Ten-time Grand Slam tennis champion Rafael Nadal, in The Miami Herald, on why he enjoys playing golf in his spare time. In his autobiography, Rafa: My Story, Nadal says he almost switched to golf after a 2005 foot injury threatened his tennis career.

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